Research Reports by CIO

10 Outsourcing Predictions for 2008 (and One to Grow On) It’s been a dynamic year in the information technology outsourcing industry. The Indian rupee rose to record levels while the U.S. dollar declined against most major currencies, impacting global IT service providers and customers alike. Merger and acquisition activity went into high gear (with the exception of poor Affiliated Computer Services, which tried—and failed— for the second time to go private). The consolidation activity was most notable for the inroads Indian providers made into the U.S. market by buying local providers. And Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services announced a $1.2 billion IT service deal with The Nielsen Company, technically the biggest offshore contract to date, hinting at the increasing maturation of the outsourcing market. Buyers of IT services also began to look beyond India to balance their offshore outsourcing portfolio, from Shanghai to São Paulo and more than a few spots in between.

India’s Greenest Outsourcer? Indian IT services provider ITC Infotech is touting its carbon-neutral status as a selling point. And that corporate focus on sustainability has the potential to woo new IT outsourcing customers away from less green competitors.

Outsourcing Vendor Genpact Makes Mexico a Passage to India India-based outsourcer Genpact has greatly expanded its Mexican operations in the last year, focusing on lower-end business process outsourcing instead of IT services work. The former GE unit calls Mexico a gateway to India offshoring and a “nearshore” alternative for BPO and call center work.

How to Make Offshore Outsourcing Deals Withstand Crisis Situations Globalization is suffering from economic, financial and political challenges. IT organizations can improve results and mitigate risks by revamping offshore strategies. Implementing globalization no longer creates automatic competitive cost advantage. While nearly all companies have globalization programs, most were created randomly and reactively without strategic consideration. To gain competitive advantage, companies must strategically engineer the integration and synergy from service providers.

Offshore Outsourcing: Can This Captive Center Be Saved? Executives with captive centers in India are starting to wonder whether it’s time to offload their offshore assets as GE did and Citigroup is reportedly doing. But Cliff Justice, an expert at EquaTerra, says that most captive data centers can be fixed.

Outsourcing Vendor Genpact Makes Mexico a Passage to India India-based outsourcer Genpact has greatly expanded its Mexican operations in the last year, focusing on lower-end business process outsourcing instead of IT services work. The former GE unit calls Mexico a gateway to India offshoring and a “nearshore” alternative for BPO and call center work.

Communication: The Holy Grail of Outsourcing It is striking how most everyone will insist that communication is a key activity to successful outsourcing. So why the heck can it be so darn hard to make people within an organization understand what is going on? And why is it so hard to have clear-cut communication between the outsourcer and the outsourced?

What The World Is Flat Means to IT Outsourcing Nandan Nilekani, CEO of the outsourcing firm Infosys and the man who inspired the phrase “the world is flat,” is pushing a new mantra that could become just as universal. Relaxing on the couch in his Bangalore office, Nilekani points out that his own company has offices in 39 countries around the world. And it’s not alone. Wipro, another large India-based IT services company, has eight offices in Europe alone, and TCS, the IT services arm of the Indian conglomerate Tata, has 10 development centers and 10,000 consultants in the United States and Canada.

How to Create a Good Relationship with Your Indian Vendor Despite the threat of commercial ascendancy from China, Russia and others, India still leads the pack as an offshore outsourcing destination, and its global presence is only growing. You need your Indian vendors’ expertise, you entrust them with many of your company’s secrets, and you depend on them for profitability. A good relationship benefits you both. But relationships are tough to build in the best of circumstances, and when you bring cultural differences and distance into the mix, misunderstanding and frustration can arise on both sides. Here’s how to bridge the U.S.-India cultural divide.

Latest Columns

The global economic scenario today is marked by slower economic growth, unemployment, Euro Zone Crisis etc., but the projections for BPM sector remain steady. The sector is also now entering a new trajectory called “Social BPM”. Social BPM is an emerging concept that amalgamates pervasiveness and flexibility of social media with BPM. Social BPM is […]

September 2009 6 reasons why 25% BPOs will perish At least one-quarter of the top business process outsourcing (BPO) firms worldwide will not exist as separate entities by 2012, according to IT market research firm Gartner.Predicting a market exit for a number of players, Gartner said acquisitions and the ascent of new vendors will rearrange […]

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IT-BPO sectors serve as the catalysts for the growth of Indian Economy says Amit Goel, CEO, KnowledgeFaber. Apart from fuelling the economy, the sectors have a far-reaching impact on the lives of people. It has a direct and indirect hand in the socio-economic conditions of people in India. IT-BPO sectors were the ones who played […]

Research Reports

A study by Everest group revealed that more than US$85 billion IT outsourcing (ITO) and Business process Outsourcing contracts are about to expire in next 18 months. The study was published by a leading advisory and research firm for global services, Everest Group. Large contracts were signed before the economic slowdown struck US. As a […]

Knowledge Base

NASSCOM, the apex body of Indian IT and BPM industry has released the list of top 15 BPM exporting companies in India for the year 2011-2012. NASSCOM has been ranking the top 15 BPM export companies in India for years. The ranking is based on the annual survey conducted by NASSCOM every year. The apex […]